Monday 23 April 2012 18.01 EDT
First published on Monday 23 April 2012 18.01 EDT

I knew something was wrong because it was like an awful burning deep inside me," Serita Shone says of the bobsleigh accident that broke her back and threatened her with paralysis. In a shattering assault on her dream of competing at the winter Olympics, the 175kg bobflipped through the air, hit the roof of the tunnel and almost cut Shone in half as it smashed down on top of her. The memory of that moment, six months ago this Thursday, makes the 22-year-old hesitate.

A clock in her parents' front room frames the silence. Each new tick-tock echoes as Shone, with moving delicacy, picks through the brutal imagery. It is obvious how important it is for her to find the right words, accurate rather than sensational, to describe that night in Germany last October.

"It was like someone had stuck a hot pipe, a massive burning pipe, right through the middle of me," Shone says in her husky voice. "I somehow held on to the bob and thank God I did because if I'd let go I would've ended up horribly mangled. I remember screwing my eyes and my face into the tightest ball because, as I clung on for dear life, I didn't know what else to do with the pain.

"I couldn't scream. I was so winded I could hardly breathe. Once the bob came to a standstill I flopped backwards. I thought that was strange. I tried to speak to Fiona [Harrison], who'd been driving, but she was unconscious. I couldn't move or talk. I could just let out noises. I can't even describe them. I'll call them wails. Wails of pain.

"The floodlights were right above us. I stared into them and I was aware of turning numb and cold and hot all at the same time. Finally, people stood over us. I couldn't see who they were as it was a mixture of bright lights and dark faces. The commotion started and I thought how long it had taken them to reach me. It was probably no more than a minute – but it felt like an hour."

Shone, who is full of humour and hope, smiles wryly on a cold April evening in Weymouth. A week on Friday she will take the next step on her remarkable comeback when she competes in the shot put at the British Universities and Colleges championships at the Olympic Stadium. The first test event at the main Olympic arena will offer another personal examination of Shone's courage and desire to make a living in elite sport – almost certainly back in a bobsleigh.

"I do find it a little upsetting, talking about the accident like this," Shone says. "I'm quite an emotionally closed person anyway, and it's difficult. But I feel emotional with it being six months since it happened, because it makes me reflect more closely on what could've and might've been. It makes me thankful I'm almost 90% OK again."

The violent smash at Winterberg, in the mountainous heart of Germany, splintered Shone's L1 and L2 vertebrae in her lower back and subjected her spine to a catastrophic shift of 15mm. She points out that, normally, the spinal column cannot absorb movement beyond 5mm without paralysis resulting. Her ability to move again, to walk and even run, to actually lift weights and plan a new life back in the bob, is one of the most uplifting stories in British sport.

Shone explains how she moved from obscurity as a talented but injury-ridden heptathlete to this walking "medical miracle". And the longer she talks, the more Shone becomes an extraordinary young woman rather than a victim. She was good enough to train with Jessica Ennis after winning the English Schools heptathlon championship in 2007 and represented GB at Under-20 and Under-23 level. But her body never really recovered after a hurdling injury. Some of her friends had switched to winter sport and last year Shone, who loved skiing as a girl, retained enough speed and power to interest coaches in the skeleton bob and bobsleigh.

"Last April," she says, "I was recovering from a stress fracture in my shin – and hoping I'd be fit enough to compete in athletics in the summer. I had no idea my life was about to change."

Her immersion in a new sport was dizzying. After Shone had impressed bob-sleigh coaches at gym‑based trials, she began training with the team last July. She was selected as a brake-woman for the GB bobsleigh squad in September and travelled to Winterberg a few weeks later. Yet Shone had never even sat in a bobsleigh that careered down an icy slope of twists and turns at a speed of 80mph.

"October 24 was the first time I got in a bob and the accident was on the 26th – three days later. As a brake-woman it's bizarre. You both push the bob from the start and after a few metres the driver jumps in and then it's your turn. That's your job done. You put your head between your knees and just hold on.

"Your life is in someone else's hands. You have zilch control. On that first run I looked through the hole in the bob but the lights on the track are whizzing underneath and you get dizzy. So I shut my eyes. The noise is the worst thing because you're just a helmet's width away from the ice. It's like being in a tunnel with a jackhammer drilling the tarmac.

"It wasn't very pleasant so I thought I'd sing a song to myself – Nellie The Elephant. But I had to count the corners so, in between singing, I was going 'six … seven … eight …' On turn nine we crashed. We ended up going backwards, upside down, for five corners. It was horrible because, with the speed and the way gravity works, we were being ripped out of the bob at the wrong angle. Afterwards, I was amazed I wasn't hurt. I thought that, while it was scary, it was kinda fun."

Over the next three days, Shone made another six runs down the frighteningly quick and bendy Winterburg track. Before her fateful seventh slide, she had crashed three times and completed three safe runs. Near the end of day three, she was asked to accept the role of brake-woman on her last run for the day with Harrison – who was not her usual driver.

"I knew something wasn't right," Shone says, "but I made myself do it. People talk about sixth sense and that was when I should've pulled out. But I wanted to show I was committed to the team and willing to take another risk.

"We'd had issues with corner nine all week so I held on really tight after turn eight. But we went through nine so smoothly it was like it didn't exist. There were 14 turns and I counted through 10, 11, and 12. I thought, 'We're almost there now.' I got ready to go into braking position. Suddenly this feeling of weightlessness came – and then the pain and noise and craziness of the crash."

On her second day in hospital, Shone remembers, "I thought I was dying because I was in such pain. My mum was there. She tried to hold my hand and I said, 'Please don't touch me … it hurts too much.' I then said: 'I think I'm dying.' I started to panic which affected my blood pressure and sent me into shock. They had to inject me with adrenaline to bring my heart-rate back. My heart nearly stopped."

Shone looks up and it's possible to imagine how she also felt when the pain seemed likely to end in paralysis. "The only feelings I eventually had were in my toes and fingers and so every day, hundreds of times, I'd twitch them. I felt pain then – like a thousand knives sticking in me."

Her parents, Ron and Julie, and Leigh Cockman, a coach on the GB team, maintained a daily vigil at her bedside. "I had to stay on my back for three weeks and they were there every single day. They were incredible. But I dreaded the nights. They had to leave and I'd be left alone. I hardly slept for three weeks. The nights were long and dark and miserable. That's when I would cry."

Yet Shone is remarkably brave and resourceful. She makes it sound as if, after two major operations on her spine, she willed herself into fighting off paralysis. "I can smile about it now but when they first told me I might not come out with two working limbs I said to Leigh: 'Am I eligible for the Paralympics? Find me an event I can do.' I thought I'd found my calling when I made it on to the bob team and so I was angry an opportunity for me to shine had been taken away.

"I asked the doctors what I needed to do to get better. That was before I could move and I was fed up. They told me what I needed to start doing. When I did that I said, 'OK, what's next?' A breakthrough came when I first stood up. They'd tried to get me up a couple of times but I couldn't do it. The pain was excruciating. But then I did it. Finally I flew back home and got out of a wheelchair and then off the crutches."

Last week Shone even went for a run. Her face lights up as she describes the sensation – "such a lovely feeling" – of jogging again on the roadside. She also visited her surgeon last Tuesday. "It was my six-month scan and he said I've done amazingly well and the bones have fused. We just need to wait for the nine-month scan and, if I get the all-clear then, I can start again."

Understandably Shone has more tangled emotions in relation to Harrison. "I'm not angry or bitter towards Fiona," she says. "She didn't do it on purpose. I'm just bitter I wasn't in control of my destiny. We've spoken but, naturally, communication between us has broken down. Our friendship has changed."

Despite being covered by medical insurance she has had to use all her savings and rely on her parents to pay her other bills. Shone now wants to battle her way out of hardship and is actively seeking work as a qualified nutritionist. Leaning forward, her eyes shining, Shone says, "I don't want to be defined by this. I want my defining moment to be an achievement in sport. The accident has made me who I am now, but I want to get back in the bob as a driver. My aim is to work my way up to being the No1 ranked driver in Britain. Hopefully that will lead to the Olympic team and, one day, an Olympic medal."

Shone smiles at her audacity – but she is also deadly serious. "I still have my dark moments when I ask what is going to be achieved by going back. But I'm the type of person that will never live my life the safe way. People who succeed in sport take risks and I hate that feeling of 'What if …?' Even if I was 100% scared I'd still make myself do it one last time. But I'm not scared. I'm determined. I want to be the best I can be. I want to get back in the bob and prove that, rather than breaking me, it can make me."